Art is pain (Closed for minx)

[Nina327]

Delia was in a fine mood when she entered her space that evening. The old college rented out its classrooms and whatnot to anyone willing to pass a background check, agree to the surveillance in the corridors, and pay rent.
She liked the space because no one fucked with her space. No one fucked with her. She could blast music at rave level satisfaction at two in the morning, and no one cared because the building is in an industrial park.

Throwing shit around, she hunted through her canvases and other supplies, trying to find a specific color for her next piece. She worked with many media, and on the walls were canvases of paint and pencil, moss curtains with crystals and dried cicada shells, tattoed leather sculptures, and bones; bleached, bronzed, painted, and covered in runes.

The room was a tall, celinged former ‘updated’ science classroom. When the plumbing went into the building, this room and the one alongside it had drains put in, the floor sloped, and was tiled. The acoustics were perfect for her, and the ceiling height allowed her to install a swing in the center of the room. It was fantastic for thinking and planning while listening to nearly deafening music. Her younger self would be so jealous.

Grumbling, she kept searching and tossing and searching. The tossing was why she was searching. She knew, KNEW, she was not out of her specially mixed crimson cross acrylic paint. She just didn't need it in her last piece weeks ago and had tossed it out of the way.

She should probably put lids on the bins so she didn't have to look inside them every time she was looking for something, but if there were lids on things, then things couldn't jump out at her and tell their story. She squealed and did a terrifically idiotic dance when she finally found her two freaking quart half-buckets of Crimson Cross paint. It was in a bin of jawbones.

“Would have been funny if it broke open,” she informed the uncaring bones. She got halfway back to her current piece before the idea sprang up, and she changed projects entirely.

Setting up a set of multiple canvases, she dipped a jawbone in the paint can and used it to slash and scrape at the canvas. It would be the backdrop to a puzzle set where the foreground was something beautiful and soft.

An hour in, she was spattered in blood-shaded paint and was swinging a ‘bloody’ jawbone at the canvas when she heard a “Holy Shit” come from somewhere near the doorway. She had gotten sidetracked. She hadn't yet shut the door.

 

[monique_minx]

For all outward appearances, Emily Knox could easily blend into the background. At 29, she was knee deep in her doctorate in Forensic Psychology and it seemed like grey and beige tones were her favourite colours. It wasn't true, of course, but she could hardly wear bright pink and be taken seriously by police officers or in a courtroom so the drab effect worked for her. Contrary to what Legally Blonde had people believing in the early 2000s, the old boys club was far worse than a single snippet in a film and anything that eased her way was the path to take.

Psychology was the map she wished she'd had sooner. For all anyone knew, she had a picture perfect childhood. The two cars, the manicured front lawn, the quaint suburban home and just her mother and father to be concerned about. Her father had been a paramedic, a hard working one at that - at least as far as Emily knew because she hardly ever saw him. Her mother was a high school Science teacher and Emily's primary caregiver her entire life. Unfortunately their relationship wasn't bliss because Emily's mother would flip sudden switches between cold and distant one minute to angry and cruel the next. On the rare occasion she was loving and caring, Emily really did think she had the perfect life.

It really came to a head when Emily was thirteen and had lied about not going shopping with her friends. She never found out how her mother knew she was lying but it somehow tripped their relationship into a screaming new level. As a result of their troubled connection, Emily was low contact with both of her parents. She couldn't risk calling her father often without her mother finding out and blowing up her phone about how she'd sacrificed so much for such an awful daughter. Emily's lip twitched just thinking about the last time her mother had exploded and bullied her mercilessly to make her feel guilty. It was only now that Emily was starting to see she had nothing to feel guilty about.

She'd rented a workspace from the college so she could do her studies in peace. She was currently working on emotionally unpredictability in early caregiving and its effects on adult behavioural regulation - inspired by her mother. She needed to write a complete study and then a paper to back her hypothesis in order to obtain her PhD. She was wandering towards the bathroom in the block when the scuffling and loud music drew her attention. Emily detoured slightly out of curiosity, finding an open door to a room Emily wasn't aware had even been occupied in the building. But then, she didn't usually stay so late. She was therefore startled to find a woman splattered in blood, swinging a bone around.

"Holy shit!" It escaped before she could stuff it down. The sound of her alarm drew the woman's attention.

The logical half of her brain was trying to tick against the primitive half. She was slowly taking in the chaotic, creative energy in the room that screamed 'art' to her but at the same time, her whole body was telling her she should definitely run. Artist and serial killer should be miles apart on an occupational list and somehow this woman was doing a mash up.

Fuck, it was fascinating.

'I'm broken and crazy', Emily thought to herself as she took a curious, dangerous step forward into the room and the view of this psychopath.

She realised she'd been gawking for a ridiculous amount of time and cleared her throat, "Shit, sorry. I didn't know the college rented this room and I just...I just heard the music."

It wasn't a strong excuse. But commenting on her own apparent lack of survival instinct felt like an invitation she wasn't prepared to extend. She remained just inside the doorframe with her fingers curled around it cataloguing the room with her eyes while trying to appear as if her heart wasn't in her throat. She rather hoped she looked casual, truthfully though, who would?

 

[Nina327]

Delia watched the gawker. She was used to this when people saw her space, or her place, or her chaos and peace. Here, though, she rarely invited people here. Her head cocked to the side, taking in the woman, slowly from top to toes and back up, eventually the statuesque, beautiful rabbit moved her brilliant eyes back to Delia.

"Shit, sorry. I didn't know the college rented this room and I just...I just heard the music." Rabbit said this as her nails seemed to be anchoring her to the outside world.

Delia's eyebrow rose, just the one as a corner of her mouth pulled up in what might have been a smile, maybe. Then she pulled her phone out of her leggings pocket and turned the music down with ease, even though the phone was in a baggie to keep paint off it. She had ruined phones and too many cases and learned her lesson, finally.

Her meditation/creation had been interrupted, but she was only slightly put off by it, by the creature in her domain. Pretty thing. She walked towards the door, towards the pretty pretty thing. As she did, she took in details: sculpted eyebrows, shit but expensive clothes, defined neck and jaw, full lips, collarbones that crowned decolletage that was modest but outstanding, lean arms, delicate fingers. "Lovely," she stated when she stopped feet from the rabbit.

Her brows creased as she thought about it: why did she think this pretty thing was rabbit-like when outwardly she seemed polished, professional, confident, even in a horrid color for her skin's radiance? While she thought about it, paint dripped from the jawbone in her hand, landing on her toes. Wiggling said toes, she felt she had more than a single drop of paint on them; she'd dripped paint on her feet all the way to the door. Stepping two steps closer, she absorbed the rabbit details with more than her intuition: Dilated pupils, slightly parted lips, a little pant, pulse jumping like mad in her neck, fingernails not just fingers gripping the door, locked frame, and perhaps a blush starting at her neck. It, she, made Delia warm all over, too.

Her voice, low and husky, let words pass her lips that she usually would not let escape her so easily: "Would you like to look around?"